Last week we talked a lot about personal space and languages. A lot of people have different preferences of how much personal space they need. With me it kind of depends on the person whether or not I am comfortable with them in my personal space or not. If the person is someone that I know and that I have been around quite a bit then I am comfortable with them being close up to me. The thing that makes me the most uncomfortable is when I am at work at the bank and random strangers will lean over the counter and get really close to me. It makes me very nervous because you don’t know what they are going to do!
On Thursday we had Matt Come in and speak to us about disabilities and about his disability. I never knew what Matt was diagnosed with until we spent time talking about it. Matt was diagnosed with cerebral palsy when he was 6 months old. He was very fortunate and was not fully affected so he can do a lot more than other people with cerebral palsy can. He said that is was a lot easier to adjust to it when you become disabled at a young age rather than when you are older because that is what you are used to and that is normal to you rather than having to change your whole lifestyle completely after you are already used to the way things were. The girl who is in our class became very sick when she was 19 and pregnant and she lost the baby and her ability to walk. I can’t imagine having to relearn basically everything and having to give up the things that I love at my age now.
Matt said that people with disabilities do not use their disabilities as an excuse. I never realized how true this was until he had said it. People who have a disability are very independent and try to do most things that they can by themselves. He also talked about doing the simple things like not staring, don’t make them feel like they are less superior to you and don’t talk down on them. Matt’s discussion really put a lot of things into perspective for me.
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